Chapter 45: Chapter 45

While the kids settled in their rooms, I did some final tweaks to my own suite. Piper and Cait shared the room with me, naturally, now that Nat could enjoy a room all to herself. While the room itself was no bigger than anyone else’s, there was a door to an adjacent suite that was converted into an office reasonable fit for officious occasions, like holding private meetings, or enjoying blowjobs from under the sturdy desk while I did my reviews and plans.

The desk was a rescue from the Tupile, and it took little beyond just resetting and buffing it up a bit for me to look like a head of state sitting behind it. The office also had a landline that connected it all the way back to New World and R&R 81, so I actually had use for a salvaged rotary telephone. I picked a red one, just for style points.

I finished up setting the cushioned seats for the office when the phone actually rang. It was nostalgic, hearing the urgent ringing and knowing someone on the other side was waiting for me to pick up. Rather than enjoy the novelty, I picked up after the second ring, settling in my seat as I heard Rylee’s voice. That meant the call was from R&R 81, since she was stationed there.

“Hey Sev?” She didn’t sound stressed, afraid or in a hurry, so nothing major to worry about hopefully.

“Yeah, I hear you Rylee. Something up?”

“There’s a group of people here to see you. Uh, Mr D is leading them?”

Oh, so the Railroad’s back to talk. Cool, wonder if they’ll take up my offer. I won’t let them operate from Caladan of course, but the land around Vault 81 should be secure enough for them with all my bots patrolling.

“Give me twenty minutes.”

A quick trip on the train and I was back in my territory within the Commonwealth. Sev’s Kingdom, some called it.

I’d need to come up with a better name. Shit, what the hell do I call my little state? Sevonia? The Nexus (need to fit ‘mods’ in somehow…)? Nova Sanctum? The Free State of… Bleh. Feck it, maybe I’ll just hold a competition for it.

I got off the train fully distracted with name generation, but quickly cleared out of that haze after walking up to the surface and registering how empty everything was with the barebones staff of Mr Handies barely seen or heard. What was once my room was expanded and repurposed into a school for both Vault 81 and Caladanites (sounds nice enough, will stick to it for now). Gives the vault kids exposure to the open world on the way here at least.

Other than that, New World 81 was practically empty of life for now, until we actually had migrants to process. Or Railroaders to host.

Seeing that I had the time, I casually made my way to R&R 81, wallowing a bit in the melancholy budding from the lifelessness of my territory. There was no laughter or running feet on the open ground, no chatter amongst excited teens, or the wails of the infants, or the comforting cooing from those looking after them.

What the fuck man, everyone just moved to Caladan, not evicted or dead. The hell am I getting soppy for?

Meh.

I entered R&R 81 with a clearer headspace, returning the bright greetings from Rylee and the other vaulters there. A couple of robot patrols passed by too, and I enjoyed the workmanship of my Eversor assaultrons and the new Centurion sentry bots. The Centurions haven’t had their first blooding in combat yet, but reports on their patrol encounters so far painted a good picture of their capabilities.

They wielded the new white laser tech on their arm hardpoints, allowing twin beams of blinding death. Simple spikes served as bayonets underneath each barrel for the off chance that the Centurion needed to stab something. The back mounted mortars were replaced with a pair of small shoulder mounted gatling lasers to run point defence or mow down targets that got too close. And the whole sensor package got an upgrade that heavily improved its detection capabilities, allowing it to select and melt down targets well beyond the shorter engagement ranges of the post-apocalypse Commonwealth.

It cost about four extra fusion cores to power the Centurion and its weapon but I could afford it, and from the reports of their rare encounter with trespassers, I’d say having to lower the threat of super mutants to a middling annoyance is a good investment. Two centurions obliterated a whole band of thirteen supas before the assaultron team members could close in.

Pushing my smug pride at the bots aside, I finally brought my focus to the visitors, ‘Mr D’ and his friends. Gotta say, Desdemona looks far more steely and resolved than her game counterpart, probably due to the subtleties of how she carried herself here not being properly expressed in the virtual world. That, or she’s out in the open here instead of whatever underground base the Railroad had now.

“Yo, the man’s here,” Deacon greeted with a wave.

“Glad to see you’re open to trade,” I returned, waving back as well. The other Railroad members regarded me with wariness, but didn’t seem like they’d be doing anything stupid soon.

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“Well, it’s one hell of a deal you gave us,” the master of disguise replied with a shrug. “A bit hard to ignore.”

I tried to keep a smirk from forming as I ushered them to the basement levels. “Well, guess we should get to talks then. You guys hungry or thirsty? The food here’s good, carried over from New World.”

*****

Desdemona harbored second thoughts as she followed Deacon into the lands of the much rumored New World 81. The robots that greeted them spooked just about everyone, though thankfully nobody went for their guns. Judging from how suddenly the assaultrons had dropped in front of them, Desdemona suspected if her party had been seen as enemies, the Railroad would have lost a lot of important people today.

She also didn’t miss the fact of how different these robots were from those she was more acquainted with. Both assaultrons and sentry bots looked far deadlier with their unknown armaments, though Desdemona wasn’t keen to find out just yet what these robots were capable of.

And then they reached the meeting spot, and R&R 81 was just as lavish as Deacon said it was. The jumpsuit-wearing vault dwellers welcomed them cheerily enough, offering food and drink ‘fresh from Sev’s store’. As a show of confidence, Deacon took a bottle of water and a bowl of...fruits? His exaggerated reactions to the snack prompted the others to join in, while the vault dwellers just gave emphatic grins.

Desdemona finally joined in when Dr Carrington uncharacteristically exclaimed at the quality of the water. “This is...what does he have to purify water to this degree?”

He was right. There was no lingering chemical taste, no faint tingling from remnants of contaminants, not even the weird staleness from opening old cans of water. This was cool, clean water from a source that had to be purer than anything out in the wasteland at the moment.

The fruits tasted almost foreign in Desdemona’s tongue with its, ironically, natural flavors that felt refreshing and devoid of any of a mutfruit’s harsh radiation tanginess. She could only guess at what the different slices were called, but at the end of the day, coupled with the clean water, it was a potent show of Sev’s power, fearsome in a way that guns and blood could never be.

They had their little snack and traded information with the vault dwellers staffing R&R 81. Apparently Sev had recently moved his people out of New World 81, and their new home was a sort of megavault paradise. Vault 81 was already implementing policies to hopefully join up with Sev, the vote to be annexed being unanimous when the offer and conditions were announced.

Then there were earlier tales of Sev’s exploits, particularly from a very excited and bubbly Rylee. Sev had helped fix up the whole vault, she said, to the nods of everyone else in a vault jumpsuit. He discovered another hidden vault and helped expand Vault 81 into it.

He also freed slaves and fully healed their wounds (the vault dwellers emphasised ‘fully heal’, including the restoring of limbs, which sounded too unlikely, perhaps hyper-realistic prosthetics?). Then he messed up some potential raping raider, and helped the Minutemen.

But Sev didn’t fuck everyone, they said, almost insisted. Oh no, he only had his two girls, and the way Rylee said it, he cavorted with some of the Vault 81’s women as well. Well, he didn’t sound like the tyrannical psychopath some rumors had made him out to be so far, which was a relief to Desdemona.

When Sev finally appeared, Desdemona found herself slightly disappointed and a bit more cautious as well. Disappointed, because he seemed a bit too...flighty for someone who had supposedly achieved so much, but the caution sprang up to remind her that someone who did achieve that much and still behaves so casually is probably far more dangerous than they seem.

They followed him down to the basement level and into a rather plain meeting room. Everyone had a seat, and Desdemona got her first true glimpse of Sev as negotiations began.

“So, what are we here to talk about?” he started, paying attention to her and Deacon in particular, even though, she realised, Deacon hadn’t introduced everyone and their positions to him yet. This might require a change of plans then.

“We’re interested in your offer if it’s still on the table,” Better not to prod around guessing what Sev knew about the Railroad. “We’d also like to know what it’d cost to buy whatever information you have on the Institute.”

Sev didn’t give a skeevy triumphant smile, or a sinister chuckle, or anything that boasted of his upper hand, as Desdemona thought he would. He just gave an easy shrug, which somehow worried her even more.

“Sure. Let the haggling start.”

The negotiations that took place were less about finding an equal trade and more wondering what Sev got out of all this. Was he truly that altruistic? Everyone, even Deacon, were left discussing just what exactly had happened. But for now, they had work to do. The Railroad would soon be moving into its new base within Sev’s lands, free to operate as they always did so long as they kept to his rather forgiving rules. And if his intel was good, they'd have to keep an eye on the crows and Bunker Hill traders.

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